AMOEBA FARTS

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& other ruminations. &, if not ‘nations’ then perhaps rumiterritories.

743px-Amoeba_(PSF).svg[1]

AMOEBA FARTS

close larvae

Hey! Calling all amateur (professional, anybody?) entomologists. I took the pixure above, and below, recently. These larval or cocoonal struxures were under a wooden deck we were cleaning. DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHAT THE HECK THESE ARE? Is this what the first wave of the invasion of the body snatchers resides in, prior to emerging to take over the world? (Not that Betty and I would know, we’re already snatcht.)

larvae

I’m serious here (mostly). What the heck are these? They’re under a deck near our house, people. Who knows, there are probably hundreds more even closer.

typical bookcliffs

Betty and I watched the last

    Twilight

movie last night. When Bella awakens in her new life as a vampire, the movie does a good job in conveying her new and intense awareness. Seeing a spider, as if under a microscope, up on a ceiling beam working on its web. A squirrel eating nuts in the forest. Even the scent of blood from a climber’s scraped knee hundreds of yards away and up a cliff.

sky to west

As Betty awoke this a.m. I inquired about her waking into a new and heightened awareness. Why, you could even hear an amoeba fart. It’s very very quiet, but has a quite distinctive sound.

“It seems that there is not a lot of attention being paid to amoebas in the media,” she opined.

“Yes,” I chimed. “One doesn’t hear nor read nor have occasion to think much about them at all.” Perhaps we’ll do our part to change that.

Betty participates in a couple of book clubs. One of these (or both?) decided to read Peter Heller’s Dog Star. Betty is rarely derogatory about what she reads, but this particular book she decided that the public and publishers and all the acclaim, and fame, was a case of THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES. Lousy book, she said. Pithy. Uses “fuck” too much – which we both agree should be relied upon sparingly. And then only for maximum effect.

And so, while out hiking in the forest above “The Monument” recently she came up with some introductory sentences to her new book. She tried to relate them to me. I suggested she do a parody of Heller’s Dog Star. Disconnected sentences, just tossed out, as if the author hoped the effect would be to ensnare a picture, concepts, feelings, which would guide the reader along in the story.

Life is but a series of random events. Suddenly, the Lebanese* fighter jets flew overhead. In the distance, smoke was still rising from an active volcano. I walked down the path. The effect that the problems we encounter in life has on us, personally, is determined by the importance we give to them. At last, some small measure of so-called “free will.”

I think her book is off to a good start. And I KNOW she’ll do better than that Heller feller.

dirty cat

Milli, the dirty cat.

close dirty caat

Milli, closer, the dirty cat.

close cat

When one considers the spaces between the tines-of-the-FORKs not ridden, nor RODE upon.

Y … hicimos nuestro diversion o divertido nuevo y Viejo: chinga-de-chinga entre los sesentas.

Heh. (Heh).

Occasionally, far too rarely, I had been considering not being so judgemental. I penned a brief and cryptic note recently while driving, which, upon later reflexion, made little or no sense.

The whirled-why’d environmental prawbleghm #1. Okay. The ultimate goal, nay, not “goal” but inevitability for (wo)man-kind* is for the hide&seek game to end – only to begin all over again.
*Is there a … “manUnfriendly”? Man-mean? Yeah, THAT’s probably more applicable and descriptive.

Now that I think about it, really, try to minimize writing notes while driving. In addition to no texting …

Speaking of “real” authors, something from T Pynchon’s Against the Day:

She sang of longing so deep that humiliation, pain, and danger ceased to matter. He had left so much emotion behind that it took him all of eight bars to understand that this was his own voice, his life, his slight victory over time, returned to fair limbs and spring sunrises and a heart beating too fiercely for reflection driving him toward what he knew he needed, could not live without. (Without a time) as the song, too many of the songs, went – back in that day … what had happened? Where was desire, and where was he, who had been almost entirely fashioned of nothing but desire? He regarded the dawn outside the street door, the cyclic fate of one more room-size Creation assembled from scratch through the dark hours one mean blow, petty extortion, faithless step at a time, a little world in which a city’s worth of lives witlessly, gleefully, in its entire force, had been invested, as it would be, night after night. It was the absence of all hesitation here that impressed him, setting aside the stimulants whose molecular products, occupying by now every brain-cell, discouraged careful analysis. It was a world entirely possible to withdraw from angelwise and soar high enough to see more, consider exits from, but nobody here in the smoke and breaking waves of desire wanted exit, the little world would certainly do, perhaps in the way that for some, as one of her songs suggested, children, though also small, though comparably doomed, are forever more than enough.

rainbow over house

16 thoughts on “AMOEBA FARTS”

  1. Check out http://www.whatsthatbug.com/ if you want to try to identify those things under your deck. They have a “nests” section which you might try first. You can also submit your picture to have it identified if you don’t find anything similar on the site. Beware! This site is really fascinating and you could spend hours browsing the pix. It’s also not for the arachnophobe (or any bugophobe for that matter).

    Please thank Betty for her opinion of Dog Star. I read a lot too and life’s to short to waste any of it on bad books.

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  3. They look like dirt dobber nests to me but I may be wrong. We have them all over in Florida. It’s a type of wasp. I hate them, of course I hate all wasps and bees and think they should be anhillated from the earth.

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  4. I think your brief and cryptic note makes sense, actually. And not even just the cyclical part either, because you know, everyone goes for reincarnation nowadays. But I don’t know if your “spiritual” understanding of things is the same as mine, so I might just be projecting my own nonsense onto it. Might even be likely.

    Looked up Dog Stars too…it sounds like one of those books whose idea could be done really well, but that it would be really easy to fuck up too. Out of deference to Betty, I won’t say fuck again for this entire post; she’s right about that. I’m overfond of the word, kinda use it as a lazy alternative to something wittier and harder too often.

    Anyway, Heller is no Pynchon. He can’t be. And as it happens, I was wanting another Pynchon book to read after Lot 49, yet I didn’t feel up to Gravity’s Rainbow just yet, so Against the Day it is. He can be really lyrical like he is in that really great quote you posted, but he’s very, very sparing with it. Or he was in Lot 49. It’s a good approach; when he does bring out the big guns like that, it’s more than the sum of the words.

    As for the alien pods underneath your deck…I have to concur that they look like dirt dauber nests, but I’ve never seen more than one at a time though. You’ve got eleven, and right next to each other. A significant number in numerology, depending on who you ask (Crowley). Perhaps it’s a sign; I believe it’s a very, very good number, if I remember correctly.

    Anyway, this is long, so I’ll stop being all hoodoo on your blog. Thank you for the book recommendation. And to Betty for hers; I may read it anyway just to see how bad it is, but I trust her opinion by proxy.

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    • Actually, after another look, those don’t look at all like the dirt dauber nests we have here. Alien pods it is. It doesn’t matter; as you say, y’all have been snatched already, so they can only be your allies. I hope you’ll put in a good word for me.

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    • fuck damn man, count agin: there were 12 nests. i think. and, i think GRAVITY’S RAINBOW might/should be your next Pynchon. in that, um, phukkyphukky, i ‘followed’ G R much much easier than i’m wallowing in and among A T D.

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  5. (rewinds a little): 1. yes, i’d say so. ATD, IMHO, is a bit more bendacious uppawn one’s mentality than GR. 2. we both could be rite, oar rawng: looks like 11.5 (11 & 1/2)

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  9. This may be my favourite post of yours ever. The photos are just stunning (as per the usual) and your kitty Millie is too cute for words. I love her little goatee!

    You had me cracking up about not writing and texting while driving, but your words are deep and thought-provoking. I’m not sure why, but I draw comfort in the idea of a cyclical world – maybe it’s my narcissism? I want to make sure that I’ll be coming back after this life is over.

    And I’ll definitely read Betty’s book!

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